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The right-wing populist regimes of Orban in Hungary and Vucic in Serbia were called authoritarian by critics, compared to the Russian government, and even accused of fascism. However, on Sunday Vučić peacefully accepted defeat in the elections; before him, Orban did the same. What was their power really like - and what does their departure mean for Europe?
The results of Sunday's elections in Serbia shocked the country, the region and many in Europe. Aleksandar Vučić and his Serbian Progressive Party (SNS) dominated national politics for fourteen years. Opinion polls showed that the Student List, a new political force not associated with the discredited old opposition, would become the first serious opponent for the ruling party. Vucic himself admitted that the fight would not be easy. But almost no one expected that the ex-president would speak almost immediately after the polls closed, admit defeat and congratulate the winners.
“I have never seen so much joy. It’s like it’s New Year’s or Christmas,” journalist Lily Lynch told me after watching the festivities in central Belgrade for two nights in a row.
The jubilation is a reaction to the convincing victory of the Student List, which received a parliamentary majority and received half a million votes more than Vučić’s bloc. But their scale is understandable only when considering how unlikely what happened seemed just a few days ago.
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Vučić had on his side a solid team, administrative resources and a well-oiled media apparatus, including public television, as well as open support for Russia, close ties with the Trump administration in the US and close relations with China, Israel and the UAE.
Opposition candidates had neither similar experience nor external support. Despite this, Vučić accused the opposition of working for foreign intelligence services. Finally, in the past, the Serbian authorities have already shown ingenuity in the event of an unfavorable voting outcome: for example, in 2022, the announcement of the final results was delayed for several months through repeat voting in a number of polling stations.
Given all this, Vučić was not expected to accept the results unequivocally and quickly in case of defeat. In recent years, critics have increasingly accused him of concentrating power and politicizing state institutions, violating the independence of the courts and freedom of speech. Liberal media described him not only as a right-wing populist, but also as an authoritarian leader - and increasingly compared him to Putin and even called him “little Putin,” echoing Kosovo Prime Minister Kurti.
“I could have expected the Student List to win, but I certainly didn’t expect such a convincing victory that Vučić would have no choice but to admit defeat. I’m also surprised that this election outcome did not lead to violence,” says Vuk Vuksanovic, a lecturer in international relations at King’s College London.
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A similar scenario previously played out in neighboring Hungary, where the opposition won parliamentary elections in April, ending the 16-year rule of Viktor Orban and his Fidesz party. US Vice President J.D. Vance even flew to Budapest to support Orban; Both Putin and Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu spoke in his favor. In its propaganda, the ruling force used anti-Ukrainian themes and even alleged an allegedly impending Ukrainian conspiracy to seize power. Ultimately, however, Orbán conceded defeat on election day and called opposition leader Peter Magyar to congratulate him on his victory.
Orbán has been compared to Putin even longer and more often than Vucic. In 2024, US President Joe Biden accused the Hungarian leader of “aspiring to dictatorship”; ten years earlier, Senator John McCain had called him a “neo-fascist dictator.” Famous Yale University philosopher Jason Stanley wrote about the signs of fascism in Hungarian politics, and former US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright accused Orban of fascist tendencies. Moreover, it was not only about nationalism and anti-Semitism, but also about the political system. “Fascism is not an ideology, but a process of seizing and maintaining power,” Albright said.
Most political scientists did not share such extreme assessments, but pointed to a serious threat to the rule of law in the country, restrictions on freedom of speech and the growth of corruption. However, after the peaceful change of power in Hungary and Serbia, the question arises - were they authoritarian?
“Authoritarian leaders are bad at giving away power,” says Dimitar Bechev, a fellow at Oxford University and the Carnegie Europe Endowment. He recalls that political scientists specifically coined the term “hybrid regimes” for political systems that combine elements of democracy and authoritarianism. Such regimes, in theory, can be defeated through elections - but due to the manipulation of rules and the use of administrative resources, this requires much more effort than in a classical democratic system.
In his opinion, the very fact of Hungary's membership in the European Union and the status of an EU candidate in the case of Serbia gives them some immunity from authoritarianism. For both countries, the EU is the main trading partner, both countries also receive funding from the EU and cannot afford to completely ruin relations.
“These are hybrid regimes,” agrees Vuksanovic of King's College London. “The election results show that this is not about European replicas of North Korea - it is about countries integrated into the framework of European politics and thus limited in how far leaders can go in the face of a serious challenge to their power.”
Accusations of Putinism against Orban and Vucic also had a more prosaic side - their friendship with the Russian leader. But here, too, a change of power does not mean a complete reversal in foreign policy. In Hungary, Magyar’s victory put an end to pro-Russian narratives in the ruling party’s rhetoric, as well as the end of ties between the Hungarian intelligence services and the Russian ones. At the same time, the new authorities are not going to give up Russian gas, still do not sell weapons to Kyiv and do not support Ukraine’s accession to the EU under an accelerated procedure.
Vuksanović foresees a similar scenario in Serbia. The new authorities can be expected to abandon pro-Russian rhetoric and close cooperation with Russian intelligence, but they will remain interested in Russian gas and good relations with Moscow, if only for the sake of continuing its support in the Kosovo issue, especially given Russia’s place in the UN Security Council.
“Of all the areas that will change when the Student List comes to power, foreign policy will change the least,” agrees Lily Lynch.
And if fascism and Putinism have been poor comparisons for analyzing Central European populists, there is another, albeit extremely vague, ideology that helps understand both their style of government and their willingness to admit defeat at the polls.
This is Gaullism, named after General Charles de Gaulle, the founder and first president of the modern (fifth) French Republic. De Gaulle was skeptical about parliament and preferred direct democracy and its manifestations such as referendums. Like Orbán and Vučić now, he used the image of an external enemy in his campaign to discredit the opposition within the country - in the post-war French context, this was the Soviet Union and the French communists, respectively. At the same time, despite his ardent anti-communism, de Gaulle was skeptical of the United States and in 1966 withdrew France from the military component of NATO.
Orban himself agrees with this comparison, proclaiming in 2015: “We Hungarians are the Gaullists of this continent!” Even earlier, a column in Le Monde listed "Gaullist aspects" in Orbán's figure, such as a fervent anti-communism coupled with skepticism towards global capitalism and an emphasis on national sovereignty.
The rhetoric of national greatness, passion for foreign policy, anti-liberalism, populism and the desire to build a strong state, the figure of a charismatic leader - Hungarian political scientist Esther Petronella Soos names the similarities between Gaullism and Orbán’s ideology.
Like modern leaders of “hybrid regimes,” de Gaulle was ready to change the election procedure in order to prevent the opposition from coming to power, but did not resort to vote manipulation and falsification of voting results. In the 1958 elections, the French Communist Party received more votes than de Gaulle's Union for a New Republic (UNR), but received only 10 seats in parliament - against 189 for the UNR. This was the result of the new constitution, in which the proportional electoral system was replaced by a majoritarian system.
As now in Serbia, it was the mass student protests that began in Paris in May 1968 that marked the beginning of the end for de Gaulle. For a while he lost control over the country, and when he regained it, he could not stay in power. In 1969, he proposed a referendum on constitutional reform. Voters rejected him, and de Gaulle resigned, ending his political career.
But whatever brand of right-wing populism has been prevalent in Central Europe over the past decade, the defeats of Orbán and Vucic mean voters have become fed up with it.
“Globally, the end of the Vučić era is further evidence of fatigue with the right-wing populism that emerged in response to the 2008 financial crisis. This does not mean that populism does not mutate into something new. But this particular version of populism seems stale. It is difficult to portray yourself as a righteous fighter against the system when you have been in power for more than ten years and have become significantly richer during this time. At some point you become the system,” says Lily Lynch.
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